Falling Apart to Halftime
by Last Haven
Summary: Where there is love, there is pain. Jadeite/Mars, set in the same universe as Safe from the Storm and the series as Fabricated, companion to 50 Sentences to Pain, Love, and Regret -link inside-


**Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.**

So, after I finished my last fic--Fabricated--I decided to do a series with the rest of the Shitennou. I'll post Kunzite and Nephrite's stories soon. This takes place in the same universe as Fabricated and Safe from the Storm. This is also a companion fic to a story found exclusively on my livejournal (due to formatting problems, I can't post it here), and this will probably make much more sense to read it beforehand. It's called** _50 Sentences to Pain, Love, and Regret_.** Here's the link:(_remove spaces and replaces the (dot)s with periods_)

_http:// last-haven (dot) livejournal (dot) com/ 20246 (dot) html# cutid1_

* * *

Each time Jadeite is reborn, he finds his heart overrun by the women in his life. Some of them viciously dig their nails into him, but some just seem to entangle themselves, pulling themselves deeper in with each smile, each laugh, each tender caress.

Jadeite wonders which of the two kinds are actually the cruelest.

*

When he is first born, he is called Jalendu, and he is proclaimed Emperor of the Eastern Lands while he slumbers in his cradle days after his birth. His father is dead, but his mother pulls him to her breast and whispers her ambitions for him.

His mother is not overtly cruel. She does not strike at him, she does not scold him, and is not stingy with acknowledging his accomplishments. But she weighs down his very soul with her will, explaining how he will become the most powerful man on Earth and she, as his mother, the most powerful woman.

She is slain when he is seven, for high treason when her plans of regicide are discovered. The most powerful man in the Golden Kingdom, King Aethlius, spares him and binds him to his throne to serve his own son, Endymion, who is also seven. Jalendu would have wondered if the king knew how his mother would have smirked to see her enemy helping to accomplish her wild goals.

Jalendu would have wondered, but Jalendu is no more.

Now he is Jadeite, General of the Eastern Lands, while in his own kingdom he is known as God-King, High Priest of Seiryuu.

*

When he is eleven, Jadeite meets his bride. She is eight and painfully shy when his aunt and her parents make them meet each other at the banquet announcing their betrothal. She presents him with a wondrous gift of a silver mirror, so perfect and smooth he is tempted to try and scry during the banquet. He isn't supposed to give her anything in return, but afterward he will paint a scroll for her.

She is only eight, playing dress up and pretending to be a bride. He is only eleven and is pretending to be a god.

Jadeite might not have the stars to turn to like Nephrite, but when he escapes down into Seiryuu's sanctuary, he flings around the dragon god's massive face and cries.

He is only eleven.

*

He is twenty; Jadeite stares at the moon princess, clinging shyly to Endymion's side and tries not to frown. She is small but energetic so he cannot help but warm up to her. She reminds him of Mei-mei, who remains in their home, ruling in his place. Serenity is good and kind but she, as he and the others try to remind Endymion, is not from their world.

He can only fret as the two rebellious lovers continue to meet.

*

He is twenty one and Mei-mei makes a surprise visit to Ellison for his birthday, bearing good news for him. He is to be a father and when their child arrives—_"not any child, Jadeite-sama, but a son, worthy of you. Is it not fate that we have met and now that we are to have a wonderful son? Perhaps we are tied by a red string."—_she will change her name to Chang'e, after the moon goddess, because she will have completed her most sacred duty.

Jadeite doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at her choice in names.

*

He is twenty one and a day when he meets one of Serenity's guardians, the intimidating Mars. He could practically feel his wife's "red string" being cut away as her violet eyes landed on him from across the garden.

He needs no stars to foresee his doom as she walks over, does not even need his mirror or the still waters of Seiryuu's sanctuary. The reflection of the moonlight in her eyes is enough.

*

He is twenty two when he buries his wife next to their stillborn Kaguya. He glares at the characters that read Chang'e, wishing only for it to read Mei-mei. But once he starts wishing, it's hard to stop.

He wishes Mars would return once more, if only so he could apologize for not warning her sooner that he was married before she worked up the courage to confess.

He wishes for the happier times of his adolescents, tumbling over Endymion and Zoisite as they escaped Kunzite's training, or star gazing with Nephrite, or riding their horses with wild abandon with Endymion and Kunzite, or helping Zoisite try on his newest dress.

He wishes he could crawl into his mother's lap during one of the times she would not look at him as the next God-King but as her son.

He wishes he could be Jalendu once more.

Instead, he lays a wreath outside his family's tomb and returns to Endymion's side. There is unrest in all their lands and they must move quickly if they wish to protect their kingdom.

*

He is twenty two and a half. After a lifetime of tragedies, it's a miracle he lasts as long as he did against Beryl's whispered promises and lies. All he wants to do is join the others and take Endymion back from the moon, back home, to where he belongs. Where they all belong. The eastern lands are in ruins, but they haven't been his home since Mei-mei died—no, since Kaguya failed to draw breath.

*

He is almost twenty three when he dies on the moon. As God-King, his body should have been placed in the waters of Seiryuu's sanctuary to sink down until his body disappeared, but as he is burned alive by Mars' attack Jadeite wonders for only a moment if it could still be worthy of a warrior's death.

For more than a decade he has lived as Jadeite. He decides as he dies that if he should meet Mars again in another life that he should thank her for letting him die as Jalendu.

*

In his next life, his family has no idea how old he really is. One cold November morning, a worker at the shrine discovers a bawling, badly chilled infant on the steps as he sweeps. The priest's family hurries him to the hospital. For sometime no one comes to claim, so the priest's family takes him in and decide that his birthday shall now be the day he was found on their steps.

They name him Kiyoshi.

They have a daughter named Kikyo who is barely two months older than him. At first they share a cradle, then a crib, and then each other's bed no matter how many times their parents chase them back to their proper beds. It makes only sense to them then that they share a marriage bed when they are both sixteen.

For two more years, Kiyoshi knows only bliss. He has a wonderful family—his adopted parents, his sisters-in-laws, all four of them, and his beautiful wife, Kikyo. And then one day, Kikyo gives birth to Keiko and Kiyoshi decides that this must be what heaven is.

Then in December, a month after Kiyoshi turns eighteen, Kikyo falls sick. She does not recover.

Keiko is heavy in his arms as she fidgets; he tries to soothe her while also trying to hear the funeral chants.

He is numb.

*

He is only supposed to be in Tokyo for a few days—he goes for an interview for a new teaching opening at a community college. He knows he failed the interview, but still he wanders around Tokyo for another two days, trying to find souvenirs for all the girls and his father. He was looking for a doll for Keiko when he runs into the other three men.

It was like déjà vu. They looked at him like he did at them—recognizing them, but not quite remembering. Faintly, they remembered something, they had to find someone. Their master. But Kiyoshi can not remember, and perhaps that is because Jadeite doesn't want him to.

It matters little in the end—when Beryl comes she sinks her hooks into them, finding the old snags she used on them before.

Kiyoshi disappears and Jadeite would sob if he had humanity left for it.

*

Time passes strangely while they are stone, and the crystals return them to life, Jadeite finds he hasn't aged a day. But memories of too many lifetimes, of too many failures and betrayals, haunt him. He sees a chance for redemption and leaves with Zoisite following faithfully behind without a word of farewell.

They end up near Kyoto briefly, the closest they get towards Crystal Tokyo in the longest time, and he broods over visiting his family. Keiko would be four years old. Last he checked—a month ago—she was being raised by Mayuri and Katsumi. Ayumi was attending college.

Tsubaki and their father hadn't returned to life when Serenity tried to heal their fractured world. At least Kikyo and their mother wouldn't be alone.

"Let's try Brazil," Jadeite tells Zoisite and it is not a suggestion.

Kiyoshi weeps, but Jadeite cannot face his daughter.

He is still only nineteen.

*

He is thirty three when he finally visits the ruins of his once grand Palace of the Eastern Lands. He removes the illusions that had kept it from sight for thousands of years, the illusions he had laid down just before they went to the moon to try and reclaim Endymion.

He wanders amongst the fallen buildings to the ancient burial chambers of his family. Time has worn away the writing, but in a way, that pleases him. Or at least it does Jalendu.

He pauses for a moment—he has not been Jalendu in centuries, and for a moment it feels like coming home. But it is not the home of Kiyoshi or Jadeite, so he only mourns briefly when he finds himself in the present.

Briefly, he wishes he accepted the others' offers of coming with him. The doors to the sanctuary have not been opened in millennia, but finally they creak open so he can squeeze inside. Once there, he wanders over to the railing looking out over Seiryuu's great cavern. For a moment, he is terrified that Seiryuu is gone, vanished finally with time.

But gods do not disappear so easily and Jadeite's heart jumps into his throat when Seiryuu's massive coils climb out of the water just before the dragon's head crests the water. Looking up into the giant silver blue eyes, Jadeite felt something like peace, true utter peace, for the first time since he was Kiyoshi.

_Hello, my priest. I had wondered when you would return._

Jadeite waited but a moment to cling to his god's face like he had as a child, like when he was Jalendu.

Jadeite returns to Crystal Tokyo, and one day Mars finds him with his sketch pad in hand.

He is thirty three when he finally see Keiko from across the street, sees his granddaughter, sees his son-in-law. It nearly breaks him.

He is thirty three when Mars drags him back to the Palace.

He is thirty three when he begins to feel forgiven.

*

He is thirty five when he remarries. It's a relief when Rei says she wants a small wedding.

Ayumi actually comes, along with Katsumi, but they both stare so intently at him, he wonders how his head isn't aflame already.

Far more surprising, they actually embrace him after the ceremony, sobbing into his new suit.

Rei looks on approvingly and Jadeite hugs them back, trying not to weep onto them as well.

*

He is forty when Kimiko is escorted up to him by the guard. It will be years before Keiko can stand to look at him again, but he can see awe and hope in Kimiko's eyes and he loves her already.

*

He is forty five and Keiko agrees to meet her new sister.

Jadeite considers his world complete.

*

He is nine hundred and twenty one when the Black Moon Family descends.

He prays that he won't lose any more of his family this time.

His heart can't take being shattered once more, and he doubts there would be enough pieces left to re-stitch him back together. It's too entangled in the hands of those he loves.

*

_Where there is love, there is pain._

_-Spanish Proverb_

* * *

**Notes: Since some characters have multiple names, here's a cast list for your convenience:**

_Jalendu_**: **Jadeite's birth name from the Silver Millennium.

_Mei-mei:_ Jadeite's wife in the Silver Millennium.

_Chang'e:_ Mei-mei's new name after she gave birth. The name Chang'e is also the name of the moon goddess, who Queen Serenity shares some characteristics.

_Kaguya:_ Jadeite and Mei-mei's stillborn daughter.

_Seiryuu: _The Azure Dragon of the East from Chinese Astronomy. It is worshipped as a god in this story, Jadeite being his high priest.

_Aethlius:_ Endymion's father from one version of the myth.

_Kiyoshi:_ Jadeite's name in his life shortly before Beryl finds them again in the manga.

_Kikyo: _Jadeite's adopted sister and wife.

_Keiko:_ Jadeite and Kikyo's daughter. Mother to Kimiko.

_Kimiko:_ Jadeite's granddaughter, Keiko's daughter.

_Mayuri, Katsumi, Ayumi, Tsubaki_: Kikyo's sisters and Jadeite's adopted sisters/sisters-in-law. Tsubaki dies shortly before Usagi becomes Queen Serenity.


End file.
